SUMMARYBackgroundHealthcare facility hand hygiene impacts patient care, healthcare worker safety, and infection control, but low-income countries have few data to guide interventions.AimTo conduct a nationally representative survey of hand hygiene infrastructure and behaviour in Bangladeshi healthcare facilities to establish baseline data to aid policy.MethodsThe 2013 Bangladesh National Hygiene Baseline Survey examined water, sanitation, and hand hygiene across households, schools, restaurants and food vendors, traditional birth attendants, and healthcare facilities. We used probability proportional to size sampling to select 100 rural and urban population clusters, and then surveyed hand hygiene infrastructure in 875 inpatient healthcare facilities, observing behaviour in 100 facilities.FindingsMore than 96% of facilities had ‘improved’ water sources, but environmental contamination occurred frequently around water sources. Soap was available at 78–92% of handwashing locations for doctors and nurses, but just 4–30% for patients and family. Only 2% of 4676 hand hygiene opportunities resulted in recommended actions: using alcohol sanitizer or washing both hands with soap, then drying by air or clean cloth. Healthcare workers performed recommended hand hygiene in 9% of 919 opportunities: more after patient contact (26%) than before (11%). Family caregivers frequently washed hands with only water (48% of 2751 opportunities), but with little soap (3%).ConclusionHealthcare workers had more access to hand hygiene materials and performed better hand hygiene than family, but still had low adherence. Increasing hand hygiene materials and behaviour could improve infection control in Bangladeshi health-care facilities.
A detailed study was carried out with the postharvest mangoes (namely, the Langra and the Khirshapat) treated with different levels of Bavistin DF (BDF) solution (namely, 250, 500, and 750 ppm) for obtaining results on biochemical changes as well as storability of postharvest mango. The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design with three replicates. The results of the experiments exhibited that only the single effect of varieties was found to be significant in most of the parameters studied. The Langra enriched a greater quantity of titratable acidity and total soluble solid (TSS) at 3rd day, over the Khirshapat. On the other hand, Khirshapat showed increased pulp pH and TSS at all the storage duration. The results explored that some physicochemical properties, namely, pulp pH, TSS, sugar (total, reducing, and nonreducing), and titratable acidity along with shelf life drastically decreased from untreated mangoes. Bavistin DF with the doses of 750 ppm showed better results in delaying the changes in physicochemical properties and extended shelf life.
Medical imaging includes different modalities and processes to visualize the interior of human body for diagnostic and treatment purpose. However, one of the most common degradations in medical images is their poor contrast quality and noise. The existence of several objects and the close proximity of adjacent pixels values make the diagnostic process a daunting task. The idea of image enhancement techniques is to improve the quality of an image. In this study, morphological transform operation is carried out on medical images to enhance the contrast and quality. A disk shaped mask is used in Top-Hat and Bottom-Hat transform and this mask plays a vital role in the operation. Different types and sizes of medical images need different masks so that they can be successfully enhanced. The method shown in this study takes a mask of an arbitrary size and keeps changing its size until an optimum enhanced image is obtained from the transformation operation. The enhancement is achieved via an iterative exfoliation process. The results indicate that this method improves the contrast of medical images and can help with better diagnosis.
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